The World Armenian Summit became a new testimony that the format of cooperation with the Diaspora is changing, giving preference not to organizations but to individuals. What are the pluses and minuses of such a tactic, especially considering that only 15% of the Diaspora is related to Armenian organizations? In response to this question, Ashot Voskanyan, a member of the Expert Committee on Armenia-Diaspora Unity of the First Pan-Armenian Civil Conference “The Future Armenian” (in 1995-1997, he was the Ambassador of Armenia in Slovakia and Austria, and the Permanent Representative of Republic of Armenia at the OSCE and the UN Vienna offices, 1996-1997 served as RA Ambassador to the Czech Republic and, in 1997-2001 was the RA Ambassador to Germany. From 2002 to 2017, he held several positions at the MFA RA. From 2007-2010, was the head of the Prague office of the RA Embassy in Vienna, and from 2010-2017 was the Head of the Asia-Pacific Department of the MFA RA) he said: “If we compare in general, what happened before (And I’m well aware because we used to participate our representatives as ambassadors), Before, they tried to bring it all together, but there were still problems because it was not clear on what principle we should choose the people from the Diaspora who represent what is called the Diaspora. And there was always a problem: why did you invite this one but not the other? Now they have changed the format and are trying to rely not on organizations but to bring some individuals. It is understandable but is still always problematic. In that case, it is understandable that we can invite all who represent the Diaspora interested in solving this problem to participate; whether they are organizations or individual people, it doesn’t matter. In this case, that difficulty will be removed.”
He also briefly presented the approach proposed by the first Pan-Armenian Civil Forum, “The Future Armenian,” to be convened on March 10-12. “The problem is to create a civil assembly, examples of which, we know, exist in the world. And to try to ensure that different strata and classes are present here; moreover, they should present Armenia, Artsakh, and different communities of the Armenian Diaspora. And it will give an opportunity to perhaps get such a “slice” of what people are thinking about in general. Here, too, I still have certain doubts, but I will talk about them later.”
Anna ISRAYELYAN
